eHarmony review (UK)

eHarmony review ratings

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Summary: Like having your own personal dating butler eHarmony does all the searching for you based on compatibility tests.

4

A dating site that takes the initiative by introducing you to compatible matches based on how much you reveal of yourself in the sign up questionnaire. Our in-depth eHarmony review sees how it fares in 2105…

eHarmony promotes itself as a place where you can meet compatible singles who are pre-screened to be compatible for you – saving you time and energy trawling through profiles of possible dates as the site promises to bring compatible matches to you. Each day eHarmony will send you a bunch of profiles selected for you – all you have to do is take your pick. This saves you a whole lot of time and trouble – however, if you like to do your own searching, discovering and nitpicking, this probably isn’t the best place for you (try Match.com instead). Also, like most other sites eHarmony is free to register and browse but non-paying customers can’t see matches with photos, so I can’t see this being a very popular choice for them. See our top 10 dating sites for alternatives or continue our eHarmony review…

A great value sign-up offer

First things first we have to mention an eHarmony discount offer currently available. Basically you can get 12 months of eHarmony’s TotalConnect (full plan) for just £5.95 a month. That’s a 74% saving on their £22.95 a month 3 month plan (which we think is too expensive, but still). Payment is billed in 3 installments of £23.80 for a £71.40 total. It’s a limited time offer and is the lowest monthly price we’ve ever seen for eHarmony. But before you decide, read the rest of our review then sign up for free to try it out first. If you like the way it works then you can upgrade to the special offer from within the site.

Questions, questions…

Ideally you should set aside half an hour or so to complete eHarmony’s sign up process. Yep, it sounds like a long time but it’s actually quite fun to really think about your personality traits, values, likes and dislikes etc. The more honest you are with your answers the more your profile will truly reflect the kind of person you are and what’s important to you.

eHarmony’s really taken some time with the look and feel of the questions and is a step above every other dating site we’ve tested so far in terms of design. A great example of this, once you’ve completed the sign-up process, is you get to see ‘The Book Of You’. A personalised and beautifully illustrated virtual book featuring summaries of all your character traits, strengths and weaknesses and how they might be seen by others. It’s a nice feature and can reveal some interesting things about ourselves.

If you opt for eHarmony’s Total Connect Plan then you’ll get a far more detailed analysis based on some extra questions and profiling.

Your eHarmony profile

First of all – let us say: wow! As far as creating a profile goes, eHarmony is one of the best if not the best site for it. It’s all so easy and thoughtfully designed, rival dating sites could learn a lot from eHarmony’s design. We love the way it’s not all boring box-ticking, questionnaire-filling, drop-down-menu-clicking. It’s truly fun, it’s very simple and yet – it gives a good idea of you as a person. In a colourful and imaginative way you get to answer to all the questions concerning you and your wishes, and all this builds up later on as your profile.

Like we said if you’re a paying member of the Total Connect Plan, not just the basic plan, you will get a more detailed personality profile of yourself, which could give you a better insight to your own wants and needs. And if you’re wondering what all these different plans are check out our eHarmony prices article for a detailed breakdown.

Not only were we impressed by how the profile-creating works we really like the way it looks too. It’s not just one huge grey lump of information that’s hard for you to take in.

You get to answer all kinds of different questions – ranging from your political views to what kind of pets you like and everything and anything in between as well. While things like that take some time to think over and put down, they give you a better idea about someone than what is his/her favourite food or how he/she likes to spend a Saturday night. What’s more – eHarmony has now introduced a special set of questions (a lot like OK Cupid does it) that you can answer in their… well, dozens if not hundreds. Each question has different options of answers to choose from and you can also explain your answers. There’s some serious stuff (Do you support death penalty?) as well as some more trivial things as well (If you were an animal, which kind would you be?). Of course, you don’t have to answer all of them but the more you do, the better are your chances in finding a true soulmate. Or at least a better match.

eHarmony.com review – searching for a date

There is no regular ‘search’ of profiles on eHarmony. In fact, you don’t see most of the profiles at all. Instead the system seeks out profiles that match your needs and expectations and posts them in your Matches page, so you can then decide whether you’re interested in further communication with them or not.

Rest assured, you won’t just get a whole bunch of people who are extremely similar – there’s still a fair variety to choose from – but most of the matches that you get will meet your expectations in at least a few of the characteristics that you consider to be important. In most cases you can determine how important a characteristic or a trait is to you and you get to mark that in your preferences as well. eHarmony will take that into account while looking for a date for you. We have to point out though that while it is good to have clear preferences, it might limit your choices somewhat as well, so bear that in mind when you make your decisions and don’t be too restrictive.

A non smoker told me they were sent someone who smoked as a suitable match so be sure to check your settings and double check you have smoking set to ‘never’ and ‘very important’. That should stop you getting matched with a smoker if that’s a deal breaker for you.

There are several methods for you to get in touch with your matches once someone catches your attention. The easiest option is probably to ‘Send a Smile’, which is pretty straightforward and and doesn’t really need a long explanation. Your next option is ‘Quick Questions’– you get a bunch of questions with pre-selected answers to choose from that you can choose to send to the person you’re interested in. Both of you will answer the same set of questions to see how compatible you are in things that really matter to you. Once they’ve replied to your questions, they can send you theirs. After that you can send each other the ‘Makes or Breaks’ – traits that you consider to be important that your partner should or should not have. And once that has been done, there’s a third option to ‘Dig Deeper’ and send them three questions of your own.

It sounds a little controlled, but it’s a good way to find out more about someone if you don’t want to waste a lot of time on people whose profiles seem great but whose emails are nothing short of a disappointing. Of course, you don’t have to go through all this painstaking guided communication thing if you feel confident enough to strike up your own conversation as you can now send direct messages to members you like too.

However, having no ability to look around yourself and find suitable matches kind of keeps your options pretty low. If you want to start looking for different people, you’d have to adjust the ‘match search’ categories accordingly, so it’s not very simple and straightforward, should you suddenly feel inclined to find a complete ‘opposite’ to attract you.

In a Land Far, Far Away

eHarmony has introduced a new feature called ‘What If’ (for subscribers only) that introduces you to people with a high compatibility rating but who might be outside of your current settings. So they could be further away or missing one or two of your criteria. In other words ‘what if… you took away some of your non deal breaker restrictions, who might you meet then?’

Another thing – eHarmony’s an international website, therefore it can also find you matches from other parts of the world should you wish that. Doesn’t hurt to keep your options open! Who knows, maybe true love really is thousands of miles away and just waiting to be discovered. On the other hand, if you really just want to meet someone in your own city, you can close all other search options and focus on near and dear.

There’s not much in the way of extras on eHarmony. There’s something called Secure Call, available to Total Plan subscribers and it gives you a chance to talk to someone on the phone without revealing your number – and apparently there are no long distance charges. But there’s no IM, no audio or video messages, none of the technical bric-a-brac.

What they do have however is a mobile app (free to use for all subscribers) that let’s you do pretty much everything you can on the website. It’s available for the iPhone, iPad and Android phones and has just been redesigned for a much better experience.

eHarmony Review: Free vs Paid site

This is a not a very good site for free users. You can create a profile and you can get your daily matches, you get to review the profiles of your matches but these are without photos! You can even communicate with the dates – send smiles, guided communication questions, even email messages! However, you yourself can’t read their messages, because you can’t access your emails until you’re a paid member.

Pros and Cons

Handy and helpful for those who take online dating seriously but find it a little confusing. Can’t perform your own search – their matching system finds you suitable matches instead.

About the Author

Aet Suvari has been reviewing and writing about the world of online dating since 2008 and the launch of Online Dating Help. A stickler for promoting ethical practices within the UK dating industry she champions the sites that get it right while highlighting those holding it back. You can follow her on Google+